


The First Primarch

by moreagaara, The_LupercalXVI



Series: Before the Imperium [8]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Adopted Children, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Art Trade, Blood Magic, Cross-Post, Cross-Posted on deviantArt, Deviates From Canon, Discovery, Fanfiction, Feral Behavior, Gen, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Literature, Magic, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Originally Posted on deviantART, Pre-Canon, Primarchs, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 04:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreagaara/pseuds/moreagaara, https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_LupercalXVI/pseuds/The_LupercalXVI
Summary: My half of an art trade with hoholupercal!  She requested that I write just the first chapter of her work,Birth of Treason, from the point of view of the Emperor.  She made sure to have Constantine's name written in the canonical form of Constantin and I did not because I am terrible.  This follows in the usual vein of WH40k stuff what I have been publishing, and with the usual universal rules that have been set up.Peep and stuff ownership brigade!Games Workshop:  WH40k and relatedhoholupercal:  the original work upon which this is based, certain quotes of which appear in this; Naevius the custodianme:  this particular bit of writing (minus a few quotes), and the Emperor's name





	The First Primarch

**Author's Note:**

> My half of an art trade with hoholupercal! She requested that I write just the first chapter of her work, [Birth of Treason](https://www.deviantart.com/hoholupercal/art/Birth-of-Treason-Chapter-1-775520773), from the point of view of the Emperor. She made sure to have Constantine's name written in the canonical form of Constantin and I did not because I am terrible. This follows in the usual vein of WH40k stuff what I have been publishing, and with the usual universal rules that have been set up.
> 
> Peep and stuff ownership brigade!  
Games Workshop: WH40k and related  
hoholupercal: the original work upon which this is based, certain quotes of which appear in this; Naevius the custodian  
me: this particular bit of writing (minus a few quotes), and the Emperor's name

Eight years ago, Daenus had had every expectation that things would go smoothly while he founded his Imperium to protect humanity from the creatures that called themselves gods. Eight years ago, his greatest project—the Primarch Project, he called it, but in reality, the resurrection of his ancient brothers—had been on track to finish exactly on schedule. He would have had time to build them armies while they grew up and teach them both of who they had once been, and what they were capable of now. His goals, his hopes, his dreams…

Gone now. No one to blame that he could see. No one who lived in the Palace, or on Terra as a whole, or even within the Sol system—the heart of his nascent empire. He had watched the security vids of the event himself. Until 23:48:33, nothing had been wrong in his laboratories. At 23:48:34, the tower containing the gestation pods that held his newborn brothers was stripped bare. At 23:49:02, someone had noticed the loss. He had needed to play the footage frame by frame to see anything even remotely wrong, and even then, there was only one oddity. Only one frame in which something had been off. A group of astartes in full armor, the number XVII etched on their armor, and one of them striking at the tower that held the Primarchs.

He had gone through hours of footage, analyzing every single portion of every single frame, trying to find how the marines had gotten in without anyone noticing. There had been Custodian guards and Sisters of Silence posted all around the doors; the Custodes would have stopped anyone visible from trying to enter the labs without proper authorization, and the Sisters would have spotted anyone trying to sneak in under sorcerous protections. They had seen nothing. The scientists he had had working on the project that night were all well trained to report anything even vaguely wrong in the room to the custodes or Sisters wandering about; they had seen nothing off until 23:49:02. Daenus had himself been in the labs that night, trying to recreate cacao plants from genetic code alone, and he had felt nothing off until the reports had come in.

_Another mystery I’ll probably never solve, _he thought, sitting before the strange device his archaeology teams had pulled from the old Mongolian desert. He knew perfectly well who had been to blame for the theft; only the so-called Chaos Gods could have pulled off a theft so brazen and so well-hidden in the very heart of his Palace and directly under his nose. That just left how they had gotten through his defenses so easily, along with where they had taken his sons—his brothers—…no, his sons. He would have needed to raise them after all, and they would have needed a father more than a big brother.

He sighed, noting but not commenting on Malcador’s presence behind him. His true-born son (not that either of them could ever dare admit it) leaned on his staff and gazed at the device as well. Neither of them spoke. Occasionally, Malcador would edit his ongoing drawing of the device, with careful loops of his pencil. Rarely, Daenus would tap his fingers against the ground next to his leg. The device was old archaeotech, clearly, else it would not have been buried in the sands. It had once been a part of something larger, as well; it had been pulled from the wreckage of some greater machine, after all. A power core, potentially, but the fuel was a mystery, and it didn’t seem to be working now, despite all their efforts to provide it something. Malcador conferred quietly to someone; some civil matter, an issue of housing law. Daenus let him take the matter on alone; his son had been old enough to fend for himself for thousands of years now, and the two of them frequently simply got things done on opposite ends of the planet in completely different ways, only ever needing to show each other small tokens of affection as thanks.

Some of the Custodian guard in the throne room with him changed. It was, by this point, well known that the Emperor was almost never in the place unless there was a show to put on, which also made it an excellent hiding place. He sighed, burying his face in his hands. Not likely to get anywhere with the Golden Throne—he had built a seat into the contraption he and Malcador had constructed around the recovered core on a whim—today. He pulled a tiny amount of Warp essence to himself and practiced fine-tuning his skill with it. For today, that meant practicing sutures with a thread made of pure Warp-stuff on a split sausage; it took him a moment to realize that the Throne’s core was responding to his work, and in fact following the movements of his Warp-thread.

Daenus stopped, brow furrowed, staring once again at the machine. His ear twitched towards the sound of someone new entering the room, interrupting his thoughts. Constantine, his first custode-son, and the Captain-General now that there were approaching ten thousand of them. Daenus tugged slightly at the sutures, hearing something deep in the Throne’s core shift as he did, and then Constantine spoke. “Sir.” Daenus heard him salute, but didn’t turn yet.

“Contantine?” he asked, puzzled why the Throne’s mechanisms were responding now of all times, and more closely examining his thread. Not quite as pure Warp-energy as he’d thought; it was contaminated with some other form of magic…something that felt perfectly natural to Daenus, but not something he frequently used…

“We may have found a Primarch, sir.”

Of all the sentences Daenus had expected, that was not one of them. He hardly dared to hope, but… “I’ve heard that before,” he murmured, almost not daring to breathe. “But not from you. Where?” He looked back over his shoulder at Constantine briefly, tucking the sausage away for now. His missing children came before the Throne acting odd.

“Close, which is why I’m skeptical, sir,” Constantine replied, not missing a beat or hiding his expression. Not fully believing the reports himself, but giving them enough benefit of the doubt to track Daenus down and relay them. There had to be at least some substance to them then. “Cthonia, specifically, but not far.” The one planet that Sol and Terra specifically had managed to maintain sporadic contact with throughout Old Night. Of course; it fit the story too well. “Odd that we wouldn’t detect it for eight years despite it being so close…” Constantine mused, but then shrugged. “Despite my skepticism, though, I thought it might be worth investigating. It is close, after all…and perhaps you might benefit from leaving Terra?” One delicately raised eyebrow.

_Ah, there it is, _Daenus thought, but he couldn’t hold back the laugh the last sentence startled from him. He ran a hand through his hair, briefly wondering when he had washed last, and turned away from the Throne entirely. He had been barricaded in a relatively small section of the Palace for the better part of a decade, only Malcador occasionally successful at prying him out of his misery. He managed to stop laughing long enough to speak. “You think I’d do well leaving Terra for a while, huh?” A small sighing laugh escaped him once again. “You’re probably right, but my Cthonic is horrible.” The language was just close enough to his native Sumerian that he always conflated the two languages with disastrous results. If he thought about it carefully, the conflation didn’t happen, but he also sounded like a stuck-up, overenunciating prick when he did that.

“It absolutely is. Let us do the talking,” Constantine replied fervently, with wide eyes and a small nod. “Sir,” he added belatedly, but not entirely apologetically. Daenus looked him in the eyes, shook his head with the first real smile he’d had in eight years, and began walking towards the spaceport and its shuttles up to his personal ship, the Bucephalus.

“We’ll leave in the morning. Twenty-five custodes and yourself will escort me. I will try not to talk,” he declared, walking as quickly as he could. He barely heard Constantine’s assurances as he peeled off to select the custodes who would accompany him; young Naevius was sure to be among them, but Ra would have to stay behind and keep the Palace under control; it was Ra’s place as Tribune, should the Captain-General leave. In the meantime, he voxed orders for his ship to be readied; the battle-barge was vast, and required an immense crew even for a short jaunt to Cthonia—a planet so close, they didn’t even need to engage the Warp drives to get there in a reasonable amount of time.

They still would. Daenus was too impatient to see if the rumors were true, and that meant waking a full quarter of the Bucephalus’s complement of Navigators in the middle of the night. They would be pissed at him, but he didn’t particularly care how many toes he was stepping on at the moment. He had a Primarch to recover.

~~*~~

The Bucephalus powered from the Mandeville point in towards Cthonia as gracefully as a swan. Daenus sat in his throne on the bridge, watching the mortal captain order the crew to perform all the necessary procedures to get them to the planet, and then land in the sturdiest available section of ground. Cthonia was riddled with tunnels, and the Bucephalus threatened to fall straight through them and to the planet’s rotten core. Even if there had been a planetary force to control who did and did not land, Daenus would not have bothered with them. He had a bigger sword and a mission he was impatient to be getting on with. He was up from the throne the moment the ship began to power down and extend its ramp.

“Constantine,” he called, wrapped in his light armor; the people of Cthonia didn’t have much in the way of weapons that could hurt him through it. The fact that there were weapons that could hurt him at all through the light armor would normally require his full battleplate, but it was to be a quick journey and he didn’t intend to be starting any fights. He had dispensed with his Talon but still carried his sword for the same reason. His Captain-General was immediately by his side; the other twenty-five custodes ranged further afield, ten ahead, ten behind, the remaining five circling around Daenus and Constantine.

They were challenged at one of the main entrances to the tunnel systems—there were buildings on the surface of Cthonia, but all were ruined and only a scattered few were still inhabited—but the custode being challenged decided he didn’t have time for gang nonsense, and so slapped the ganger’s weapon out of their hands and delicately placed his spear against their throat before they could blink. Their eyes were as wide as saucers when the custode calmly stated “_We’re looking for a young child, bronze skin, black hair, gold eyes, probably magic, fell from the sky in a little metal pod. Seen him?_” in perfect Cthonic without ever once moving the spear from their throat.

The ganger gulped and the action drew a pearl of blood. “_Star child lives with the ferals now,_” they answered, completely frozen in place. The custode raised a single eyebrow at them, and the ganger whimpered, then pointed deeper into the tunnels behind him.

“_Thank you,_” the custode replied with a slight smile, and lowered his spear. The ganger didn’t relax, however, as the custode stepped much too close, looming over the much smaller mortal. “I’m gonna stay here with my new best friend, sir.”

Daenus nodded his acceptance; he and the remaining custodes pushed past the pair. Daenus glanced back when he heard a thud and a whispered “_Boop._” The ganger had collapsed into an unconscious heap, and the custode held a finger at the point in the air where the ganger’s nose had been. He ducked his head to hide his smile, then continued to follow his honor guard. Each time they were challenged, one of his custodes would disarm their opponent and demand directions to the “star child”, and each time they were told that he lived with the ferals and were given steadily better directions to feral territory.

They weren’t challenged again when they actually entered feral territory. No one walked the tunnels where they went; by then, Daenus had fifteen guards remaining. There were hissing noises all around them; Daenus slowed down, watching the tunnels sidelong. Each hissing tunnel contained a thin, ragged creature with glittering eyes glaring out at the armored trespassers with bared teeth. He closed his eyes and picked up the pace, the better to more quickly leave the living nightmare, and his Custodians matched his pace, though they were less careful to stick to the middle of the tunnel.

Their ‘hosts’ weren’t happy about that, but they weren’t quite upset enough to throw things at the invaders. Yet. Up ahead, Daenus heard arguing. “Did they say what tunnel he was in?!” Naevius, clearly not looking forward to having to actually poke around in any of the tunnels.

“Ferals, Naevius. They don’t exactly bring them in for a census,” Constantine’s voice, much calmer than Daenus felt. He had taken a turn in the foreguard, trusting Daenus to be safe with the five guards surrounding him. Admittedly, Daenus had been behaving even in regards to not speaking Cthonic.

“I _get _that, Constantine, but you’d think a Primarch would at least have made a name for himself if they’re as legendary as the Emperor says they are…” Naevius growled just as Daenus caught up to the arguing pair. He felt a faint since of familiarity nearby and tried to quietly track down its source.

Somehow Daenus kept his voice calm and quiet. Perhaps the calmness came instinctively from all the surrounding ferals, perhaps it came from somewhere else. “And I do think them legendary, Naevius, but he’s seven at most, assuming he came out of the gestation pod on time,” he informed the youngest of his available custodes. One of the nearest custodes was standing just a bit too close to one of the ferals’ tunnels, and the feral within was doing everything in their meager power to frighten the transhuman off, without success. They seemed fairly large and healthy, all things considered. Daenus made to tug his custode further away from the tunnel, but a flash of motion caught his eye and his attention snapped to it.

A rolling, desiccated heart belonging to someone long dead. He silently turned his head to find where it had come from, finding a small feral child, withered thin from recent extreme hunger, and covered in filth. Daenus’s eyes widened; he started forward to pick up the heart and give it back, only for Naevius to crush the clearly treasured organ under his boot with a cry of disgust. The feral child shrieked dismay and scrambled forward with a sudden surge of strength. Naevius said something Daenus couldn’t quite hear as he made himself calm down; there was no possible way the Custodian could have known how precious organs could be to feral humans, especially hearts. Whoever the heart had belonged to meant the world to Horus, else he would have long ago eaten it. He closed his eyes and inhaled, mentally counting to twelve before he approached.

Constantine rightly read the situation and called Naevius a bastard. Daenus half heard him apologize to the inconsolable feral child, and opened his eyes to see Naevius being clawed at ineffectually, and Naevius wearing an expression of extreme distaste. “Can I shoot it?” he asked as Daenus approached.

“If you hurt him, I will kill you,” Daenus whispered, not trusting himself to raise his voice any louder and not wanting to further upset the other, surrounding ferals. He felt Constantine back away and paid exactly zero attention to Naevius when he crouched, and then knelt before the small, furious, child. The Primarch Horus, the brother with whom he had been closest in their youth. It wouldn’t matter so much to a feral child if his Cthonic accent sounded like he had been gargling sewage, so he attempted the language. “_Belia was friend?_”

Horus stopped beating on Naevius’s greaves, uncaring of his many bruises and cuts. “_Only friend. Shotted. Could not stop death pain. Want be with her. Want not feel inside pain,_” Horus fumbled over the words, placing a tiny hand on his chest, just over his hearts, and staring up at Daenus’s eyes. If the heart had still been around, Daenus might have been able to bring her back, as Horus was silently asking. As it stood…

“_I very sorry, but…_” Daenus struggled for a long moment, half-wanting to slip entirely into feral cant, but not quite ready for anyone besides Malcador and Horus (eventually) to know about that particular side of himself and his past. He knew the words, but if he tried to speak them now… he gave up and looked to Constantine. “Can you tell him she would want him to keep going?” Constantine looked moderately annoyed at his Emperor having broken his word, and for sounding worse than usual; they had a brief exchange over whether the Emperor should have spoken at all, Daenus having spoken because it was Horus and how could he not, how Constantine had expected taller, but Constantine eventually knelt next to Daenus, smiled, and offered a careful hand.

“_Your friend would not want you to follow her, little one. She would want you to fight and hold her close, if no longer physically, at least you can hold her in your mind. Up here,_” he informed Horus, tapping his head and then his chest. “_And in here. The pain you feel inside is your heart. The one that makes you sad sometimes or angry other times. It doesn’t always go away really fast when it really gets to hurting. And losing a friend can make it hurt really bad for a really long time, especially when you don’t have many friends to lose. But if you keep going, if you keep fighting, you can carry them with you everywhere you go. Death is not the end of anything but duty._” Even Daenus felt moved by the words, silently noticing the custodians who had been left behind rejoining the party. Horus considered, then carefully started to reach for Constantine’s hand—

The sound of gunfire echoed down the tunnel, near enough that Daenus looked up and Horus startled towards his tunnel. Constantine caught him quickly, and Horus immediately began hissing and spitting his displeasure. Daenus felt his hackles going up instinctively, but made himself remain calm and analyze the gunfire. “_You’re fine—_” Constantine attempted to reassure the tiny, belligerent Primarch, only to be kicked directly in the teeth with all of Horus’s strength. Daenus winced when Constantine groaned and spat out blood.

“You deserved that,” Naevius commented offhandedly, but more interested in the potential threat to his Emperor. Constantine snarled something about Naevius needing to defend that statement when they got home, but Naevius ignored him for the most part. “Cthonians shooting at…Cthonians,” Naevius observed.

_Thank the dead gods, _Daenus thought, currently only able to see highly dangerous _threats _down the tunnel. “Gang wars, then,” he determined, gathering Horus away from his Captain-General and cradling him in a position from which the child Primarch could not easily escape. Even so, Horus still clawed with all his fury at the softer parts of Daenus’s face until the Emperor spun Horus around and pinned his tiny arms behind his back. “Stop, damn!” Daenus half-growled, but Horus only started kicking instead of clawing. Daenus was on the verge of flipping Horus upside down and carrying him by his wrists and ankles regardless of the inevitable tantrum when an explosion rocked the ground.

Daenus’s grip loosened a fraction; Constantine started to speak; the world went white speckled with gold, red, and blue. Daenus yelped when Horus wriggled free and darted towards the relative safety of his tunnel, delicately clearing the remains of the psychic blast away. _Answers a lot of questions I had about everyone commenting about self-control…_

“Psyker, eh?” Constantine commented, blinking rapidly, but ensuring his Emperor was merely stunned from the blast. A mortal would have been demolished by the blast, along with most of the surrounding tunnel system; as it was, the majority of the explosion’s energy had gone into stunning the Emperor.

“They all have some psychic abilities…clearly his come out when he’s terrified,” Daenus replied, with a ‘well isn’t that just _brilliant_’ tone. He was only half aware that he spoke his next thought. “Curious about why this scares him so much, though…” he sighed, briefly lamenting his current lack of a brain-to-mouth filter and examining the tunnel Horus had hidden within. Fairly large, didn’t seem to narrow, no shelves Horus could push over onto Daenus to slow his advance…

“Sir, what would you have us do?” Naevius asked. Daenus blinked, coming back to himself. Right. He wasn’t alone against Horus right now, and he had help to go and fetch the runaway feral Primarch.

He licked his lips before answering. “We get him out and leave before we get dragged into a conflict,” he said with far more certainty than he felt. “Unless someone else has a suggestion?” he looked around at the gathered custodes. Twenty-six, just as when they had left the ship; all were shaking their heads, and Constantine voiced the general opinion.

“The tunnels are about five yards tall and don’t seem to narrow,” he said, resting his weight on one leg and watching the tunnel like a hawk as he spoke. “We could easily walk in and drag him out. Not sure what that will do to his emotional state, but he isn’t as dangerous now as he will be when he’s older. Even if we let him hit us with everything he’s got right now, I don’t see much problem. Waiting a few months would be problematic as he’s going to work at being strong enough to fight us. Assuming we aren’t caught in a WAAAGH! or a compliance and can get back in a few months…a few years and we’re going to need an army to tame him, and that’s if his mind isn’t completely gone by then,” Constantine continued, primarily addressing the Emperor, who nodded his agreement, mind more set.

“He can still be taught a lot right now, too,” Naevius chimed in. “The more he learns how things _should _be for a feral, the more he’s going to resist us.” All perfectly true and sensible; Daenus motioned them inside, and Constantine first insisted that both he and Nae disarm—although Constantine kept his sidearm—and Naevius removed his shoulderguards. The two Custodes entered at the same time.

The neighboring ferals were furious at this development. First the armored men invaded their territory, and then they just walked into other people’s tunnels? The older ferals barked angrily, the younger made rude gestures. All growled and hissed, the sound almost nightmarish now that Daenus was no longer so influenced by Horus’s proximity, and many of the ferals clawed territory markings at the edges of their tunnels. Others urinated to create scent markings, and still others smeared cut arms and hands around the edges for a marking. Daenus listened carefully, but didn’t speak; doing so would likely set the ferals off further, and kept his eyes focused on the tunnel entrance.

Horus screeched fury once he had been located. Within four minutes, Constantine exited with a captured Primarch and a lightly mauled Naevius, whose expression dared anyone to comment on the deep scratch across his face. “He’s losing fight fast,” Constantine commented, adjusting his grip to compensate for Horus’s continued struggles. Lacking any actual attacks, Constantine’s job was fairly simple. “Apothecary should check him out; we board on your command, sir.”

“Very well, we leave. Do your best to not disturb their, eh, town,” Daenus ordered; there were a few scattered salutes, but for the most part, the custodes simply began to leave as rapidly as they could. This time, Constantine stayed nearby and Daenus watched as Horus slowly ceased fighting, strength waning until at last they reached the ship and he fell unconscious. Daenus took him, disturbed by Horus’s lightness in his grip.

_Is this what happened to all of them? Are they all just deprived, frightened children clawing for a chance to simply survive? _he wondered. Constantine didn’t have an answer, so Daenus remained by Horus’s side for the entire trip. The apothecary was perfectly capable of fixing malnutrition without Daenus’s help, but something about Daenus’s stance must have warned him off, because the mortal left his Emperor alone for the entirety of the trip back home to Terra.


End file.
